Negotiations in Municipal Government

On Tiverton Fact Check, the town’s negotiations with Twin River lead me to wonder about elected officials’ sense of negotiation:

Wait, hold on. Construction is already underway, and as Newport showed when it rejected a similar proposal, the process for Twin River to set up its government-run casino in a particular municipality is complicated, expensive, time consuming, and risky. So… what’s Twin River’s leverage in this negotiation for tax deals?

One gets the sense — at least at the local level — that elected officials aren’t negotiating so much in the bare-knuckle interests of their constituents as against some abstract and relative idea about what a “fair” result would look like. In this case, construction is under way. How is it that the negotiations are now moving toward giving Twin River a better deal, rather than getting more relief for taxpayers?